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There's nowhere else to go. The house on the end of the road looms behind you and you turn, and you're crying and cannot stop.

The dagger glows red, and you had forgotten it. You raise your arms and--

-- used to lay with you, but now all she lays in is a hospital bed. This is her final resting place. -- used to love you, and you used to love her back.

There's nothing left to love, now, nothing but a corpse because the heart monitor has flatlined. She looks like she could be sleeping, her hair spread behind her delicate face.

You didn't want her to die like this, but you're the girlfriend and -- is the husband and the choice was never yours to make, but it wasn't his, either. He pulled the plug on her. He abandoned her.

You loved them but they're gone now, each in different ways. You loved them both but the love is gone, and where it once lived is a hole in your chest. She is gone, and so is a part of you.

The hands clutch your chest and the blackness has arrived. The hands drive scissors into your chest and you choke, spitting up red. The hands treat you like a piece of meat, and with a distant mind, you realise turnabout is fair play.

The hands extract your heart, and you sigh, an exhalation of defeat. You watch it beat in her hand, a squirming mess of yellow coated in red.

This goddess, with a lower case g, looks upon Licraesa with nothing but fondness and misplaced familiarity. Licraesa bares her teeth. Licraesa does not take an offered treat. She does not offer the goddess, with a lower case g, her trust (her arm, her heart, her allegiance), but hears her out as she did the last.

She hates her.

She hates her until she says the word love, and a number of pieces fall into place, for it is a word you did not remember until now. Licraesa clenches her fist and bites her tongue until she draws blood, and she trails behind the goddess, shoulders hunched and wary.

Love.

The word is weird in her head and weirder on her tongue, the word is all-encompassing, the word is mind-altering.

Licraesa takes a seat and joins the tea party, and it's ludicrous. Licraesa joins the tea party and dreads it. Licraesa joins the tea party and she wishes she did not have an invitation to the absurd, but the word love rolls over her tongue, and she has to know. She has to.

The teapot turns on its head and swallows you whole, engulfing you in darkness. The teapot becomes a world, distant and dark. The teapot turns into--

You had never been very brave. Reckless, maybe, careless, sure, wild, absolutely. But you don't confuse bravery for stupidity and you're at least smart enough not to kid yourself.

When you are in pain, you get reoccurring dreams. When you are in pain, the darkness turns against you. When you are in pain, your mind becomes a hostile arena.

There is always a beach & there is always a moon & there are always props of black on a backdrop that's blacker.

There is always a reason for your presence in this dark kingdom without light.

You have never been so lost inside yourself before in your whole life. The sand is warm beneath your toes & you have all the time in the world but you wouldn't be here if everything was right so something has to be wrong. You don't know the half of it, the quarter of it & remain certain anyway. It curls through your chest like a length of barbed wire.

You walk through the fabric of your own mind & it is silent, your feet dragging in the sand & they are bare, your body moving without question down the same path it always takes. You will reach the water, soon, and the black waves hit the sand and it is a comfort, the black waves--

Your weapon breathes to you a warning and he sounds miles away, and all he says is she's coming for you & you know.

You know what is in store.

(You think you do, but you do not.)

The howl you hear is inhuman & it would be kind of funny if it wasn't coming from another version of yourself. The you with memories of murder & poison, serving a king of hatred and malice. The you that is obsidian and ruby cut sharp, a swath of shadows cut from a cloth of revenge. Blood slides from your ears & the duty of your legs abandon you and--

You know it is a dream but you cannot quash your terror. You know it is a dream, that it is yours, that the whole world here is within your hands-- and you cannot control it. You know it is a dream, but you cannot wake up.

You think you are going to cry before you realise you already are. Coughing up the blood that's turned to a boil, you have fallen to your knees and the other you is waiting.

She is upon you, her inky black fingers curved into knives for claws & there is nothing you can do. Struggling yields no positive net result. Struggling makes her laugh and it is ugly and dry. Struggling means you are playing her game.

You still to not provoke her and close your eyes to block it out, and as a reward she pulls your chest cavity apart & her fingers take hold of the bones of your ribs & she gleefully snaps them. One by one. It is excruciating and you must scream but you have no voice. You have been denied even the most basic means of expression.

Instead, you convulse on a beach made of darkness & your blood turns to dust & your stomach convulses & you do not want to move (have no strength to do so, have no will to live) but you empty your stomach of its contents & all that comes out is sand.

Weakly you grab for the sand and the pain is worse when you try to breathe deep and your eyes stay shut and you look up. You look up and you see her, red teeth red eyes no features not even a skull. Red teeth black heart no joints connecting body parts to the body. Red claws red accents and she is a marionette without strings.

She would have been your puppet but she didn't like the show, she would have been obedient if you had just been stronger.

You do not believe in god or any sort of heaven but this must be hell, the pain in your chest is worse than almost dying in arctic waters and the other you kicks you until you cannot bear to move.

You cannot wake up. You cannot end your suffering. You cannot move as her foot turns to a talon and further opens up your back, latches on with claws to move your body like the rag doll it is. Maybe if you close your eyes this will all be over.

She is speaking to you & you cannot hear her words & your chest is opened up, y cut, and what do you call an autopsy on the living? Is it a vivisection if you are merely dreaming? Is it torture if it is only just a dream?

You have no more tears to shed and you do not want to watch and she hasn't complained so far about your eagerness to close your eyes but if you think you'd get away so easy, then you thought wrong. She threatens to remove your eyelids so you open up your eyes and stare into the abyss of red teeth red eyes and it stares back into you and if there was a scorecard then the abyss just won.

The other you pulls out your organs, one by one, and they aren't organs but they are you, fundamentally. They are you, your hopes, your dreams, your memories. They are your connections. They are your personality. They are you, and you--

Your voice does not work.

You cannot ask her to stop, you cannot do anything but watch and the organs squelch in her black hands covered in blood that turns to sand. Instead of love she inserts malice and instead of hope she inserts paranoia.

The dream is collapsing but her work is already done.

The dream is collapsing & she is no longer who she was.

The dream is collapsing and--